Back in Edinburgh

Arrived back in Edinburgh a few days ago. Where's the sun gone?

I was super unhappy for the first couple of days after getting back... really missed the hot weather, hot girls and awesome food of Asia. Really felt like flying back out to somewhere hot and new, but I've got a bunch of things to be around for over the next few months. I've settled back a bit more now, the weather has got better (14deg ;/) and most of all it's been cool to catch up with my friends/family.

Don't really have much motivation to blog about the rest of the trip... but I'll do some flickr photo albums over the next week or so. Here's the last batch of my pics... Hong Kong & Macau. Hong Kong was one of the most awesome places I've ever been, I think it's probably at the top of the places I'd like to live for a while. Such an awesome place, really vibrant with tonnes of stuff going on, AMAZING food, really nice gorgeous girls and some pretty cool clubs/nightlife.

Poker went badly during the trip. I felt like I played well for the most part but ran really badly, but who knows. I had a $5k day early on, followed by a bunch of breakeven then a brutal 25 buy-in downswing which really made me re-evaluate my play. I moved down to $200nl and crushed for 20k hands, then started playing $100plo which I've been really enjoying.

I've logged about 8k hands since getting back across $1/2-5/10nl and $.5/1-1/2plo. Aiming to get 25k hands in by the end of the month. In the future I'm planning on playing a lot of $1/2nl and $1/2plo as my main games and upping the amount of tables I play to 8-10. The truth is that I've never really had any variance at $1/2, it's been steady 3ptbb over 100k hands and games are really good. So I'll prob play something like 75% $1/2 and 25% $2/4+ over the next couple of months and see how that works out. The MSNL nl games have definately got a LOT tougher over the last 4-5 months.

As far as travelling goes I was kind of hoping to hit up the US and Vegas this summer, but I'm gonna put that on hold because it conflicts with a few important dates in the UK. I like being in Edinburgh around the summer anyways, especially around festival time and I really need to get my grind on so it makes sense to settle here til around September. I'll probably travel around for longer this winter, likely 6 months or so. Brazil, Argentina, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Manilla, Korea, Japan all intrest me at the moment, but I'll see what develops. I'd really like to do a Euro road trip in the summer too... hopefully can get out of the UK a bit at least.

I liked the living away and travelling a lot more than I thought I would. Seeing new places every day and living somewhere where the people and culture are very different is really intresting. I feel like I've came back a much more developed person than I would if I'd stayed in the UK for those 3 months. It's just cool going a ton of places, seeing a ton of things and meeting a ton of people, good times.

To wrap u the Asia stuff... here's pic from each of the places I visited over the last few months. Sweet times.

Drinking, Patong, Thailand
Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Rooftop of our house, Kata, Thailand

The lost art of seal-riding, Singapore

Kicking it on the beach from The Beach, Phi Phi, Thailand

Guarding the Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand

Kung Fu Skillz, Hong Kong, China